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Federal Budget Policy (January 2018)

Class Five -- Tuesday, January 9th, 2018

In today's class, we will begin our discussion of presidential spending powers. To introduce the topic, our class discussion will focus on a debate between Professors Stith and Sidak over the power of the purse. (The Boland Amendment, which figures heavily into the Stith and Sidak debate, is an example of an appropriations rider, a topic explored in a briefing paper assigned as oreading for Class Four and a legislative tool of continuing significance.)

Team Assignment: (Teams A2 & E2): Please be prepared to evaluate the relative merits of Professor Stith’s and Professor Sidak’s arguments.

For a more up-to-date treatments of presidential budgeting, we include two readings: the first by Allen Schick offers a more traditional, political scientist's assessment of the process and second by Professor Eloise Pasachoff, providing a view from the legal academy. Please read over one of these treatments.

Finally, as background reading, I've included a briefing paper reviewing empirical literature on the impact of the president's budgeting. This reading is entirely optional.